Comments on: * FOIA Complaint filed by Ken Dillon in federal court against the US DOJ filed last weekhttps://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2017/08/29/foia-complaint-filed-by-ken-dillon-in-federal-court-against-the-us-doj-filed-last-week/
Thu, 24 May 2018 09:35:00 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.com/By: DXerhttps://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/2017/08/29/foia-complaint-filed-by-ken-dillon-in-federal-court-against-the-us-doj-filed-last-week/comment-page-1/#comment-49741
Sun, 10 Dec 2017 16:39:46 +0000http://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/?p=13713#comment-49741Q. Were you, in the time period before
September of 2001, were you familiar with the shipping
practices — I should say were you familiar with
Dr. Ivins’ practices with respect to shipping anthrax
material outside of the lab?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you know if he made any studies of
bacillus anthracis material outside the lab in that time
period before September of 2001?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you know if any of those shipments are
Ames material?
A. I cannot a hundred percent tell you that
they were all Ames. They could have been Ames, they
would have been any strain that we with working with at
the time. (Civil Depo at 120)
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Sun, 10 Dec 2017 16:13:16 +0000http://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/?p=13713#comment-49740“A. I mean, the times that the FBI and the
report states that he was in the lab, after hours and on
the weekends or whatever really doesn’t give enough time
to have made that kind of preparation. I think that a
lot of the times that they — they count the time that
it takes you to actually get into the lab and shower
out, and when you look at those times really closely,
there is only a small window of time that he was
actually in the laboratory.

So I have heartache over that when I look at
that. It would require a lot more time within the lab
to do something of that nature, from the knowledge that
I do know. So that’s my other reason for that”. (Civil Depo at 110)

“I mean, there are two other organizations I
know of that defintely could, and the one who actually
prepared the original stock is half across the country
away, and I don’t think that —
Q. Dugway, you’re talking about.
A. That’s correct. I don’t believe that we had
the means to do it and I don’t think that Bruce had it
in him to do this. I really don’t.
Q. Okay. So you’re giving me two bases there,
really.
A. Yeah.
Q. One is that —
A. Scientifically.

Q. Well, it’s really a nonscientific, I guess,
opinion, but —
A. Yes.
Q. — that Dugway might have been an option
because they had, what, more equipment?
A. Yes. I mean, they can do it all right
there.
Q. Right.
A. And no one would know, because that’s what
their mission is out there. Their mission out there to
create biowarfare agents. (Civil Depo at 107)

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Sun, 10 Dec 2017 16:07:17 +0000http://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/?p=13713#comment-49738“And do you have any opinion
as to whether you think Dr. Ivins was the anthrax
mailer? …
A. I don’t believe he’s guilty.
Q. Okay. And why not? You’re entitled to your
opinion.
A. I don’t believe he’s guilty because I
think — I mean, specifically with RMR 1029, what I know
now, USAMRIID was not the only Army institute that has
that strain. (Civil Depo. at 106)
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Sun, 10 Dec 2017 15:54:34 +0000http://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/?p=13713#comment-49737Kristie Friend, in explaining why she expressed concern about her desk and contamination, explained the unsafe nature of the opening of the Daschle letter in the BL-2.
That the FBI used Bruce Ivins’ protectiveness of his worker was extremely unsound.

“A. Because the practices, the safety practices
that he’s referring to was the day the letter was opened
in area 105 when Ms. Abshire took that slide out. She
didn’t have any gloves on — well she had one glove on
one hand and one glove on — not on the other hand. So
the glove she used to carry that slide out of that lab
was gloved; this hand, she didn’t, and she walked
halfway through the institute with that slide, and to
me, that was not a safe procedure, considering at that
time it was unknown exactly what the agent was.
We had no idea the concentration of it, and
from all I had been trained by Dr. Ivins and Ms. Fellows
at that point in time, I did not feel that was safe.” (Civil Depo at 92)

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Sun, 10 Dec 2017 15:50:24 +0000http://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/?p=13713#comment-49736Q. Now, and Dr. Ivins said that the reason that
he went ahead and did that was because you had voiced
concern about contamination to him —
A. That is correct.
Q. — based on the powder that was brought into
that AR —
A. 105-106.
Q. — 105 room and that his position was that
you told him that you didn’t think they were using safe
practices and you were concerned about contamination.
A. That’s correct.
Q. And so he went ahead and he saw dust on your
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Sun, 10 Dec 2017 15:47:56 +0000http://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/?p=13713#comment-49735Ms. Friend reports that her desk was contaminated with Sterne, not Ames.

“A. Yes. And actually, Dr. Edison didn’t give
the data, Dr. Ezzell did, because the samples got turned
other to his laboratory and they confirmed what it was.
Q. And it was confirmed anthrax?
A. That’s correct. But it was not Ames.
Q. What was it, if you remember?
A. Sterne.” (Civil Depo. p. 90)

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Sun, 10 Dec 2017 15:41:03 +0000http://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/?p=13713#comment-49734Kristie M. Friend, in her civil deposition, explained that she did not credit the FBI’s theory.
She both worked for the FBI on Amerithrax for years as a scientist and had personal knowleddge of Bruce Ivins laboratory and available facilities.

“Q. What I was asking was, based on your
knowledge and from having read the FBI report, where
they assert that the equipment used was at USAMRIID,
there was a lypholizer and a speed vac that was used to
dry the liquid anthrax and turn it into powder, do you
think that was possible to do with the equipment that
you were aware of that was there?
A. No.”
***
A. Because I think the type of equipment that
would have been necessary — yes, a lyophilizer could
have been used, but the only one that I am aware of
that’s actually at USAMRIID could not have been used to
produce this quality of the powder.
Q. And why not, in your opinion?
A. The lyophilizer that could have been used is
not in a containment suite, A, so I’m pretty certain —
Q. Is it outside the containment suite?
A. That’s correct, it’s in the Biosafety Level 2. (Civil Depo. at 87)
.

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Sun, 10 Dec 2017 15:35:45 +0000http://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/?p=13713#comment-49733“Q. Did he — what would he say to you about the
capacity to be able to perform this type of operation?
A. He would only say very minimally things. He
never said that he had the ability to do what was in the
anthrax attacks. The only comment that Bruce would
commonly say is that once it was determined that it was
the Ames strain, that he felt very guilty, because all
of his animal studies prior to that were performed with
the Ames strain, and he, of course, had published our
data on that, and he felt that it was his fault that
whoever used the — they were going off of his research
to do it. So he felt very guilty about using Ames in
all those studies, because if he hadn’t done those
studies, the perpetrator would have never known to use
hat strain of anthrax.” (Civil Depo. at 86)
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Sun, 10 Dec 2017 15:32:11 +0000http://caseclosedbylewweinstein.wordpress.com/?p=13713#comment-49732Q. Okay. What about Pat Fellows and Mara
Lin[]scott? Did Dr. Ivins ever tell you or did you ever
notice that he had any type of special relationship with
them?
A. Yes.
Q. All right. And what was your observation
about that?
A. Well, Bruce was very protective of Pat. If
things didn’t work out, like if people were trying to
make — like if Pat did something wrong or she said
something wrong to someone and someone would come to
report that back to Bruce, he would definitely defend
Pat. I mean, Pat and Mara couldn’t do anything wrong.
Mara is a very bright individual. When I
first met her, I was very impressed. She could do the
dilution math calculations in her head; she didn’t have
to draw the pictures like the rest of us did. Her mind
and Bruce’s mind scientifically and mathematically
worked very well together.

So in the beginning I did find it very
difficult to fill Mara’s shoes…(Civil depo at 83)